MyBotang : January 2013

New Year is a big thing in Japan.. well for the Japanese at least, for me, it is rather nerve wrecking.. Having Sofea (my 10yo) home for 2 weeks and Imran (my 36yo errr..hubby) for a week whining I'm bored and rummaging the pantry, fridge and under the sofa for food every 30 minutes is no fun.. so while the Japanese are cleaning and writing their nengajo (New Year cards) and preparing their Osechi-ryouri (Japanese traditional new year foods), I was planning how we'll spend the holidays with minimum hair pulling and hopefully no increase to (my) waistline..

We did enjoy mochi tsuki and eating mochi on the final days of 2012 and some other outings, but the thing that kept Sofea and myself occupied most of the time was DOODLING..

We got this book (ball pen doodling) from our local book store.

It is 127 pages and instructs how to illustrate using colour ball pens.

It is RM57 (inclusive shipping from Japan to Malaysia)

The book is divided to 4 main categories (with many sub categories):

1. Lines and shapes, emoticons

2. Human and animals

3. Plants and everyday items

4. Greeting cards for various occasions

We enjoyed drawing and combining different shapes and designs and playing around with different colour pens (Sofea's personal stash).

The book contains step by step instructions on illustrating an image, for an example - drawing different facial expressions using the same basic design, or how by adding a line you'll be able to change a young human face to that of an older face.

I also loved how the author used different coloured pens to illustrate - a rose was illustrated with red pen and the stem and leaves were drawn using green pen.

My 10yo girl had great fun trying out the illustrations and it kept her occupied for hours.. I would say the book is suitable for school going kids and adults who enjoy doodling and are looking to improve and learn new illustrating techniques.